V. I. Lenin

Notes of a Publicist

On Ascending A High Mountain; The Harm Of
      Despondency; The Utility Of Trade; Attitude Towards The
      Mensheviks, 

      Etc.[1]

Written:End
      of February, 1922First Published:PravdaNo. 87, April 16, 1924; Published according to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 2nd
      English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 33, pages 204-211Translated:David Skvirsky and George
      HannaTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R.
      CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive
      (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or
      distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation
      License

IBy Way Of Example

Let us picture to ourselves a man ascending a very high, steep
      and hitherto unexplored mountain. Let us assume that he has
      overcome unprecedented difficulties and dangers and has
      succeeded in reaching a much higher point than any of his
      predecessors, but still has not reached the summit. He finds
      himself in a position where it is not only difficult and
      dangerous to proceed in the direction and along the path he has
      chosen, but positively impossible. He is forced to turn back,
      descend, seek another path, longer, perhaps, but one that will
      enable him to reach the summit. The descent from the height that
      no one before him has reached proves, perhaps, to be more
      dangerous and difficult for our imaginary traveller than the
      ascent—it is easier to slip; it is not so easy to choose a
      foothold; there is not that exhilaration that one feels in going
      upwards, straight to the goal, etc. One has to tie a rope round
      oneself, spend hours with all alpenstock to cut footholds or a
      projection to which the rope could be tied firmly; one has to
      move at a snail’s pace, and move downwards, descend, away
      from the goal; and one does not know where this extremely
      dangerous and painful descent will end, or whether there is a
      fairly safe detour by which one can ascend more boldly, more
      quickly and more directly to the summit.

It would hardly be natural to suppose that a man who had climbed
      to such an unprecedented height but found himself in such a
      position did not have his moments of despondency. In all
      probability these moments would be more numerous, more frequent
      and harder to bear if he heard the voices of those below, who,
      through a telescope and from a safe distance, are watching his
      dangerous descent, which cannot even be described as what theSmena Vekh[2]people call “ascending with
      the brakes on"; brakes presuppose a well designed and tested
      vehicle, a well-prepared road and previously tested
      appliances. In this case, however, there is no vehicle, no road,
      absolutely nothing that had been tested beforehand.

The voices from below ring with malicious joy. They do not
      conceal it; they chuckle gleefully and shout: “He’ll
      fall in a minute! Serve him right, the lunatic!” Others
      try to conceal their malicious glee and behave mostly like Judas
      Golovlyov.[3]They moan and raise their eyes to
      heaven in sorrow, as if to say: “It grieves us sorely to
      see our fears justified! But did not we, who have spent all our
      lives working out a judicious plan for scaling this mountain,
      demand that the ascent be postponed until our plan was complete?
      And if we so vehemently protested against taking this path,
      which this lunatic is now abandoning (look, look, he has turned
      back! He is descending! A single step is taking him hours of
      preparation! And yet we were roundly abused when time and again
      we demanded moderation and caution!), if we so fervently
      censured this lunatic and warned everybody against imitating and
      helping him, we did so entirely because of our devotion to the
      great plan to scale this mountain, and in order to prevent this
      great plan from being generally discredited!”

Happily, in the circumstances we have described, our imaginary
      traveller cannot hear the voices of these people who are
      “true friends” of the idea of ascent; if he did,
      they would probably nauseate him. And nausea, it is said, does
      not help one to keep a clear head and a firm step, particularly
      at high altitudes.

IIWithout Metaphors

An analogy is not proof. Every analogy is lame. These are
      incontrovertible and common truths; but it would do no harm to
      recall them in order to see the limits of every analogy more
      clearly.

Russia’s proletariat rose to a gigantic height in its
      revolution, not only when it is compared with 1789 and 1793, but
      also when compared with 1871. We must take stock of what we have
      done and what we have not as dispassionately, as clearly and as
      concretely as possible. If we do that we shall be able to keep
      clear heads. We shall not suffer from nausea, illusions, or
      despondency.

We wound up the bourgeois-democratic revolution more thoroughly
      than had ever been done before anywhere in the world. That is a
      great gain, and no power on earth can deprive us of it.

We accomplished the task of getting out of the most reactionary
      imperialist war in a revolutionary way. That, too, is a gain no
      power on earth can deprive us of; it is a gain which is all the
      more valuable for the reason that reactionary imperialist
      massacres are inevitable in the not distant future if capitalism
      continues to exist; and the people of the twentieth century will
      not be so easily satisfied with a second edition of the
      “Basle Manifesto”, with which the renegades, the
      heroes of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals,
      fooled themselves and the workers in 1912 and 1914-18.

We have created a Soviet type of state and by that we have
      ushered in a new era in world history, the era of the political
      rule of the proletariat, which is to supersede the era of
      bourgeois rule. Nobody can deprive us of this, either, although
      the Soviet type of state will have the finishing touches put to
      it only with the aid of the practical experience of the working
      class of several countries.

But we have not finished building even the foundations of
      socialist economy and the hostile powers of moribund capitalism
      can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this
      and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than
      illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And
      there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give
      legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting
      this bitter truth; for we have always urged and reiterated the
      elementary truth of Marxism—that the joint efforts of the
      workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory
      of socialism. We are still alone and in a backward country, a
      country that was ruined more than others, but we have
      accomplished a great deal. More than that—we have
      preserved intact the army of the revolutionary proletarian
      forces; we have preserved its manoeuvring ability; we have kept
      clear heads and can soberly calculate where, when and how far to
      retreat (in order to leap further forward); where, when and how
      to set to work to alter what has remained unfinished. Those
      Communists are doomed who imagine that it is possible to finish
      such an epoch-making undertaking as completing the foundations
      of socialist economy (particularly in a small-peasant country)
      without making mistakes, without retreats, without numerous
      alterations to what is unfinished or wrongly done. Communists
      who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and
      who preserve their strength and flexibility “to begin from
      the beginning “ over and over again in approaching an
      extremely difficult task, are not doomed (and in all probability
      will not perish).

And still less permissible is it for us to give way to the
      slightest degree of despondency; we have still less grounds for
      doing so because, notwithstanding the ruin, poverty,
      backwardness and starvation prevailing in our country, in theeconomicsthat prepare the way for socialism we havebegun to make progress, while side by side with us, all
      over the world, countries which are more advanced, and a
      thousand times wealthier and militarily stronger than we are,are still retrogressingintheirown vaunted,
      familiar, capitalist economic field, in which they have worked
      for centuries.

IIICatching Foxes; Levi And Serrati

The following is said to be the most reliable method of catching
      foxes. The fox that is being tracked is surrounded at a certain
      distance with a rope which is set at a little height from the
      snow-covered ground and to which are attached little red
      flags. Fearing this obvious]y artificial human device, the fox
      will emerge only if and where an opening is allowed in this
      fence of flags; and the hunter waits for it at this opening. One
      would think that caution would be the most marked trait of an
      animal that is hunted by everybody.

      But it turns out that in this case, too, “virtue unduly
      prolonged” is a fault. The fox is caught precisely because
      it is over-cautious.

I must confess to a mistake I made at the Third Congress of the
      Communist International also as a result of over-caution. At
      that Congress I was on the extreme Right flank. I am convinced
      that it was the only correct stand to take, for a very large
      (and influential) group of delegates, headed by many German,
      Hungarian and Italian comrades, occupied an inordinately
      “Left” and incorrectly Left position, and far too
      often, instead of soberly weighing up the situation that was not
      very favourable for immediate and direct revolutionary action,
      they vigorously indulged in the waving of little red flags. Out
      of caution and a desire to prevent this undoubtedly wrong
      deviation towards Leftism from giving a false direction to the
      whole tactics of the Communist International, I did all I could
      to defend Levi. I suggested that perhaps he had lost his head (I
      did not deny that he had lost his head) because he had been very
      frightened by the mistakes of the Lefts; and I argued that there
      had been cases of Communists who had lost their heads
      “finding” them again afterwards. Even while
      admitting, under pressure of the Lefts, that Levi was a
      Menshevik, I said that such an admission did not settle the
      question. For example, the whole history of the fifteen years of
      struggle between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in Russia
      (1903-17) proves, as the three Russian revolutions also prove,
      that, in general, the Mensheviks were absolutely wrong and that
      they were, in fact, agents of the bourgeoisie in the
      working-class movement. This fact is incontrovertible. But this
      incontrovertible fact does not eliminate the other fact that inindividualcases the Mensheviks were right and the
      Bolsheviks wrong, as, for example, on the question of boycotting
      the Stolypin Duma in 1907.

Eight months have elapsed since the Third Congress of the
      Communist International. Obviously, our controversy with the
      Lefts is now outdated; events have settled it. It has been
      proved that I was wrong about Levi, because he has definitely
      shown that he took the Menshevik path not accidentally, not
      temporarily, not by “going too far” in combating the
      very dangerous mistakes of the Lefts, but deliberately and
      permanently, because of his very nature.

      Instead of honestly admitting that it was necessary for him to
      appeal for readmission to the party after the Third Congress of
      the Communist International, as every person who had temporarily
      lost his head when irritated by some mistakes committed by the
      Lefts should have done, Levi began to play sly tricks on the
      party, to try to put a spoke in its wheel, i.e., actually he
      began to serve those agents of the bourgeoisie, the Second and
      the Two-and-a-Half Internationals. Of course, the German
      Communists were quite right when they retaliated to this
      recently by expelling several more gentlemen from their party,
      those who were found to be secretly helping Paul Levi in this
      noble occupation.

The development of the German and Italian Communist Parties
      since the Third Congress of the Comintern has shown that the
      mistakes committed by the Lefts at that Congress have been noted
      and are being rectified—little by little, slowly, but
      steadily; the decisions of the Third Congress of the Communist
      International are being loyally carried out. The process of
      transforming the old type of European parliamentary
      party—which in fact is reformist and only slightly tinted
      with revolutionary colours—into anew typeof
      party, into a genuinely revolutionary, genuinely Communist
      Party, is an extremely arduous one. This is demonstrated most
      clearly, perhaps, by the example of France. The process of
      changing thetypeof Party work in everyday life, of
      getting it out of the humdrum channel; the process of converting
      the Party into the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat
      without permitting it to become divorced from the masses, but,
      on the contrary, by linking it more and more closely with them,
      imbuing them with revolutionary consciousness and rousing them
      for the revolutionary struggle, is a very difficult, but most
      important one. If the European Communists do not take advantage
      of the intervals (probably very short) between the periods of
      particularly acute revolutionary battles—such as took
      place in many capitalist countries of Europe and America in 1921
      and the beginning of 1922—for the purpose of bringing
      about this fundamental, internal, profound reorganisation of the
      whole structure of their Parties and of their work, they will be
      committing the gravest of crimes. Fortunately, there is no
      reason to fear this. The quiet, steady, calm, not very rapid,
      but profound work of creating genuine Communist Parties, genuine
      revolutionary vanguards of the proletariat, has begun and is
      proceeding in Europe and America.

Political lessons taken even from the observation of such a
      trivial thing as catching foxes prove to be useful. On the one
      hand, excessive caution leads to mistakes. On the other hand, it
      must not be forgotten that if we give way to mere
      “sentiment” or indulge in the waving of little red
      flags instead of soberly weighing up the situation, we may
      commit irreparable mistakes; we may perish where there is
      absolutely no need to, although the difficulties are great.

Paul Levi now wants to get into the good graces of the
      bourgeoisie—and,consequently, of its agents, the
      Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals—by
      republishing precisely those writings of Rosa Luxemburg in which
      she was wrong. We shall reply to this by quoting two lines from
      a good old Russian fable[4]: “Eagles may
      at times fly lower than hens, but hens can never rise to the
      height of eagles.” Rosa Luxemburg was mistaken on the
      question of the independence of Poland; she was mistaken in 1903
      in her appraisal of Menshevism; she was mistaken on the theory
      of the accumulation of capital; she was mistaken in July 1914,
      when, together with Plekhanov, Vandervelde, Kautsky and others,
      she advocated unity between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; she
      was mistaken in what she wrote in prison in 1918 (she corrected
      most of these mistakes at the end of 1918 and the beginning of
      1919 after she was released). But in spite of her mistakes she
      was—and remains for us—an eagle. And not only will
      Communists all over the world cherish her memory, but her
      biography and hercompleteworks (the publication of
      which the German Communists are inordinately delaying, which can
      only be partly excused by the tremendous losses they are
      suffering in their severe struggle) will serve as useful manuals
      for training many generations of Communists all over the
      world. “Since August 4, 1914,[5]German
      Social-Democracy has been a stinking corpse"—this
      statement will make Rosa Luxemburg’s name famous in the
      history of the international working class movement. And, of
      course, in the backyard of the working-class movement, among the
      dung heaps, hens like Paul Levi, Scheidemann, Kautsky and all
      that fraternity will cackle over the mistakes committed by the
      great Communist. To every man his own.

As for Serrati, he is like a bad egg, which bursts with a loud
      noise and with an exceptionally—pungent smell. Is it not
      too rich to get carried at “his” congress a
      resolution that declares readiness to submit to the decision of
      the Congress of the Communist International, then to send old
      Lazzari to the Congress, and finally, to cheat the workers as
      brazenly as a horse-coper? The Italian Communists who are
      training a real party of the revolutionary proletariat in Italy
      will now be able to give the working masses an object lesson in
      political chicanery and Menshevism. The useful, repelling effect
      of this will not be felt immediately, not without many repeated
      object lessons, but it will be felt. The victory of the Italian
      Communists is assured if they do not isolate themselves from the
      masses, if they do not lose patience in the hard work of
      exposing all of Serrati’s chicanery to rank-and-file
      workers in a practical way, if they do not yield to the very
      easy and very dangerous temptation to say “minusa” whenever Serrati says “a”, if
      they steadily train the masses to adopt a revolutionary world
      outlook and prepare them for revolutionary action, if they also
      take practical advantage of the practical and magnificent
      (although costly) object lessons of fascism.

Levi and Serrati are not characteristic in themselves; they are
      characteristic of the modern type of the extreme Left wing of
      petty-bourgeois democracy, of the camp of the “other
      side”, the camp of the international capitalists, the camp
      that is against us. The whole of “their” camp, from
      Gompers to Serrati, are gloating, exulting, or else shedding
      crocodile tears over our retreat, our “descent”, our
      New Economic Policy. Let them gloat, let them perform their
      clownish antics. To every man his own. But we shall not harbour
      any illusions or give way to despondency. If we are not afraid
      of admitting our mistakes, not afraid of making repeated efforts
      to rectify them—we shall reach the very summit. The cause
      of the international bloc from Gompers to Serrati is
      doomed.

[1]This article was
      not completed.

[2]Smena
      Vekh—the title of a collection of articles published
      in Prague in 1921, and then the name of a journal published in
      Paris from October 1921 to March 1922. It was the mouthpiece of
      advocates of a socio-political trend that emerged among White
      émigré intellectuals in 1921 and was supported by
      part of the old, bourgeois intelligentsia that did not emigrate
      for various reasons.

A certain revival of capitalist elements in Soviet Russia
      following the implementation of the New Economic Policy served
      as the social foundation for this trend. When its adherents saw
      that foreign military intervention could not overthrow Soviet
      rule they began advocating co-operation with the Soviet
      government, hoping for a bourgeois regeneration of the Soviet
      state. They regarded the New Economic Policy as an evolution of
      Soviet rule towards the restoration of capitalism. Some of them
      were prepared loyally to co-operate with the Soviet government
      and promote the country’s economic
      rejuvenation. Subsequently, most of them openly sided with the
      counter-revolution.

A characteristic of this trend is given by Lenin in this volume
      (see pp. 285-86).

[3]Judas
      Golovlyov—a landowner and main personage of
      M. Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin’sThe Golovlyov Family.He was called Judas for his bigotry, hypocrisy and
      callousness. The name Judas Golovlyov has become a synonym for
      these negative traits.

[4]This is a reference
      to the fableThe Eagle and the Hensby Ivan Krylov.

[5]In the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, the Social-Democratic
      faction voted with the bourgeois representatives in favour of
      granting the imperial government war credits amounting to 5,000
      million marks, thereby approving Wilhelm II’s imperialist
      policy. .